Quantum Computing

I don't know how many of you have been reading/listening about the new advances in computers, besides ridiculously fast processors, but there has been a push in the scientific comunity to harness the power of the Quantum World. For those of you who do not know, but on the quantum level, particles can exist in an infintely many number of states at the same time! The only way to determine a particle's state is through probability. Although this may seem pointless, this has led to a very intriguiging idea.

What if it was possible to use the laws of the quantum world to make computers exponentially faster? In classical computing, computers process information in the form of 0's and 1's which stand for off and on. Everything the computer does is in this form, the only thing is that a "bit" can only be on or off (or 0 or 1.) If we apply the laws of the Quantum world, however, bits can be both on and off; bits can be simultaneously a 1 and a 0. This is a truly revolutionary idea. This new type of "bit" being tested is called a "qubit." The only problem with this is that since scientists are dealing in a realm where literally anything is possible, then it is extremely difficult to make a computer based on "qubits."

One of the main problems with creating qubits is that in the quantum world, anything that interferes with the quantum particle automatically causes a change in the quantum particle. Thus, by trying to merely display the outcome of a qubit (like showing the a letter typed on a screen,) then the qubit automatically changes states, since it is being acted upon by an outside force. The furthest quantum computing has come is building a "computer" that can compute the sum of 1+1. Although this may seem like a small step, it is a giant leap for computing data using qubits, as well as a huge step for harnessing the powers of the quantum world.